Superheroes clash again at final mock caucus

A large crowd turned out to Black Box on Tuesday night to pick their favorite superhero at Simpson’s second and final mock caucus.

A variety of heroes including Spider Man, Black Panther, Captain Marvel and many others were all candidates vying for Simpson College’s delegates.

The event was held by the Culver Public Policy Center in collaboration with the Simpson chapter of the Andrew Goodman Foundation, the Simpson College Democrats and Simpson College Republicans. Representatives of the Warren County Republicans and Warren County Democrats also helped lead the caucus.

With the Iowa caucuses less than a week away, the event helped new and returning caucus-goers understand the differences between each party’s caucus. Visiting students from Australia also attended the event and participated to a great degree, with some even making speeches for their preferred superhero candidate.

The caucus started at 7 p.m. and ran for around 45 minutes. The Republican caucus, which runs on a simple ballot method, took little time. The Democratic caucus consisted of an alignment period where attendees separated into various groups corresponding to their candidate preference. After a count to determine which groups had enough members to stay viable, members of the nonviable groups were given a realignment period to pick another candidate or become undecided.

First-time caucus attendee Madeline Gude said, “The Democratic caucus is still a lot to wrap one’s head around. I don’t even know where the idea for different processes came from.”

Simpson Democrats representative and Captain Marvel spokesman Geoff Van Deusen said, “I was surprised how they similar they were, to be honest. Especially here in Iowa. I consider Iowa to be more of a Republican state, and there’s been a bunch of states who have flat-out said, ‘We’re not doing a primary or caucus’ and Iowa seems to be going forward with the caucus and seems to be pretty much the same way, you sign a card, you pick who you want.”

There are several new changes coming to the Democratic caucus during this election cycle. Seth Andersen, director of the Culver Center, explained, “One other thing I would add that’s different this year for the Democrats is, if you’re in a viable group after the first alignment, you have to stay in that group.”

In years previous, Democratic caucus-goers were allowed to change their preferred candidate after the first alignment.

The turnout for the caucus was large and diverse in terms of candidate preference, with all but one candidate in the Democratic caucus having enough group members to stay viable.

“To be honest, we got a bigger turnout than I was expecting, which is cool,” Van Deusen said. “I think we got the entire Australian study abroad group, plus people who just wanted to learn about the caucus.”

The Iowa caucuses will take place next Feb. 3. Simpson students living on campus will fall into one of three precincts. More information on caucus times and exact locations can be found posted around campus.